The History of Java, v. 1-2Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir
History
The History of Java, v. 1-2
Raffles, Thomas Stamford, Sir
Java (Indonesia) -- History
The farming stock of the cultivator is as limited as his wants are
few and his cottage inartificial: it usually consists of a pair of
buffaloes or oxen, and a few rude implements of husbandry. There is
a small proportion of sheep and goats on the island; but, with the
exception of poultry, no kind of live stock is reared exclusively
either for the butcher or the dairy. By the returns made in 1813 of
the stock and cattle of the provinces under the British government,
containing a population of nearly two millions and a half, it was found
that there were only about five thousand sheep and twenty-four thousand
goats. The number of buffaloes, by the same return, and in the same
space, was stated at 402,054, and of oxen at 122,691. Horses abound in
the island, but are principally employed about the capitals, and not in
husbandry, further than in the transport of produce from one district
to another.
The buffalo and ox are used for ploughing. The former is of a smaller
size than the buffalo of Sumatra and the Peninsula, though larger than
that of Bengal and of the islands lying eastward of Java. It is a
strong tractable animal, capable of long and continued exertion, but it
cannot bear the heat of the mid-day sun. It is shy of Europeans, but
submits to be managed by the smallest child of the family in which it
is domesticated. The buffalo is either black or white: the former is
larger and generally considered superior. In the _Súnda_, or western
and mountainous districts, nine out of ten are white, which is not at
all the case in the low countries; no essential difference in the breed
has been discovered to be connected with this remarkable distinction of
colour. The usual price of a buffalo in the western districts is about
twenty-four rupees for the black, and twenty rupees for the white; in
the eastern districts the price varies from twelve to sixteen rupees.
The _Súnda_ term for a buffalo is _múnding_; the Javan, _máisa_ and
_kébo_: and in compliment to _Laléan_, the prince who is supposed to
have introduced cultivation into the _Súnda_ districts, that prince
and his successors on the _Súnda_ throne are distinguished by the
appellation _Múnding_ or _Máisa_. The name of the individual sovereigns
enters into a compound with these general terms for the dynasty, and
they are called _Máisa-laléan_, _Múnding-sári_, and so of others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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